Character Building - Part 1

by Julie Santing

As a teenager you develop the habits, the attitudes, the principles that you’ll have when you’re older. It’s as if when you were a child your parents laid a foundation. This is a mixture of your personality... when you’re a teenager it’s like you start building on this foundation. You start to build a house, basically who you are. As a teenager you have the chance to build your character and develop the person you want to be for the rest of your life. When you get to adulthood, your time of building is over. Sure you get to paint your house every now and then... redecorate the insides a few times. But what’s there is there. You might get to build on an extension, but you can’t knock down the entire thing and start over. You have to live with what you have.

The Average Choice

So you’re here. You’re a teenager. You’re parents have laid the foundation. Some of yours look pretty good, it’s uneven here and there, but it might do. Other people look at their foundation and see some kind of shambles. It’s very uneven. It doesn’t look all that great. You’re not a builder or an architect but when you realise that that’s what you have to work with you really want to squirm.

Next you notice, there’s no architect. There’s just you; your parents; your siblings; your grandparents and a few friends, but they tend to come and go a lot. These are the people who are building your house, along with you. Sometimes they tend to the most awkward horrible things that you have to spend ages fixing. Other times, you are so absorbed with putting in your new beautiful circular clerestory double glazed window at the front of your house; that you don’t notice when they create some very strange looking room at the back of the house, or if you do you aren’t bothered to care.

And so you keep on building. You become an adult. You plaster over the cracks in the walls. You plant a bush just beside your house so that people won’t notice that specific wall is crooked. You redecorate. You focus on making the front of your house looking the best it can possibly be. If people are so lost in wonder at the beauty of your front door and that circular clerestory window they won’t notice that the back of your house is falling apart and that termites are eating away at the frame of your house.

This is how you continue until you die. In between then and now your house might fall apart or it might just last long enough so everyone is fooled into thinking your life is perfect, except you, and God, of course. And judgement day you find out that your life plan of focusing on the front exterior didn’t fool God.

The Alternative

Not everyone’s life will have such a dire ending. But sadly the above is the average, even the majority. Check it’s not you. In fact make sure it’s not you. And plead with your friends to make sure it’s not them either. Here’s your chance.

No matter how hard your parents tried, they could never give you a perfect foundation for your life. Jesus is the only trustworthy foundation. He is the solid rock; the firm foundation. When you become a Christian it’s like your house is transferred onto Christ. For a house to be sturdy your need a firm, strong, solid foundation and that is exactly what Christ is.

He has to be the basis of your very existence, your very being; not an extra decoration, but the one you can’t live without.

When the basis is right everything else just becomes so much easier. Not only that, but you get the ultimate architect, the Holy Spirit. Not a bossy snob who takes over your life, but one who encourages you to think more about the framework than the decoration.

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To read part 2 of this article check back next week!